18 THE PASSENGER PIGEON IN PENNSYLVANIA 



his rugged body and retired to his lodge for refresh- 

 ing sleep, and to deram of further pleasures on the 

 morrow; for his domain was undisturbed by envious 

 hatreds. 



He was free to devise new things for his pleasure 

 and to read the riddle of life, as he beheld it, and to 

 improvise, by conjecture, the laws of the narrow uni- 

 verse about him. No doubt, he thought himself the 

 recipient of all the blessings known to intelligence and 

 benevolent solicitude for his comfort. This vision was 

 impressed upon his soul while he was passing from the 

 shadow land of youth — race infancy — to the field of 

 greater efforts that should develop forces in him, then 

 undreamed of ; but essential to the plan of evolution 

 from troglodyte to responsible man. This early im- 

 pression became his Happy Hunting Ground. 



By observation he learned that the mysterious Pas- 

 senger Pigeon returned to his forest for nesting only 

 when food from the beech (Pagiis Americana) was in 

 abundance — a surplus of beechnuts, over and above 

 the quantities consumed by other birds and stored for 

 winter use by the little animals. Compared with the 

 conifers, all broad-leaved trees are but recent arrivals 

 in the evolution of plant forms upon the earth ; and 

 the beech tree came at the end of that development, 

 about the last to develop, of all our tree species that 

 bear nuts. In recent times, then, the beech tree de- 

 veloped to its maximum of development and suffer- 

 ed a rapid decline. The passenger pigeons developed 

 with the beech, and declined in numbers, as the beech 



